Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 664

The Trail of the Bandit Nabob

This dime novel installment, written by Captain Howard Holmes, opens with two interwoven narratives. The main story concerns Captain Gold-Dust, a fugitive from the East, living in hiding near Tiger Trace, Arizona—a lawless mining camp built around legends of a lost Spanish presidio containing buried gold. Gold-Dust reunites with Full-Deck Frank, a handsome young gambler, to inquire about a mysterious beautiful woman who vanished after appearing at a gambling table. When Gold-Dust glimpses a man named Morel writing in an adjacent cabin, he reacts violently before fleeing. The next morning, Full-Deck Frank discovers Morel's severed head on his table. The second narrative introduces Monckton Morel, a New York detective summoned by Mrs. Eva Holden, widow seeking to prove that millionaire Bolivar Blake—supposedly found dead in the river ten years ago and blamed for murdering her husband—actually survived. The text grows fragmentary toward the end.